Asking for your consent – a bigger say for customers

Your rights to choose the purpose your personal information is used for

Marketing offers and sales promotions seem to be everywhere, sent to us online, by phone, or in the post. Privacy laws make it a requirement that companies wanting to send us material like this must get our agreement first. This may sound simple in outline but in practice many people aren’t always certain about what they’ve agreed to.

The new privacy rules aim to make it easier to see what material you have agreed to receive from organisations. Also, they must make it clearer when you’re agreeing to receive it. They must make it simple for you to change your decision and opt out if you wish to. A consequence of this may be that you have more choices to make about your personal settings. Even if you think that you have done it all before it’s worth taking a moment to check your settings when asked to do so. That way, you should only get material likely to be of interest to you.

We’ll always send you important service messages about changes to interest rates, how to keep your account safe and the benefits linked to your account. But you can decide not to receive our marketing material. You can also see how we make decisions about what may be relevant to you in the Marketing section of our Privacy notice.

Agreeing to receive marketing material is just one example of ‘giving your consent’. It’s worth remembering that the new privacy laws cover other types too, such as agreeing to have your credit status checked. There are details in our Privacy Notice of how the regulations apply to our services and how the law protects you.

Our privacy notice

This sets out how we protect your privacy. It covers the personal information that we have, where we get it, how we use it and who we share it with.